solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

'Isolation' is a little horror set on a remote irish farm, with (from what I can gather) the basic premise being; people play around with genetics, genetics goes bad, people are trapped, cow monster stalks and kills. Hmmmm isolated somewhere remote, an unseen enemy stalking its prey…soooooo 'Aliens' on a farm then.

Still from the clips that are floating around, the film is certainly nicely shot, and holds a sense of suspense well. However early reports have been really mixed (although they nearly always are with horror films) with some reports from the Toronto Film Festival being quite negative, but then later reviews after the screening at 'Dead by Dawn' were nearly all positive.

Any film with a man-eating-cow can't be that terrible, and at worst might just be decidedly average. Also fighting it out for the award for 'Best Farm Based Horror' is New Zealand production 'Black Sheep' with a tagline that says it all 'There are four million sheep in New Zealand….and they're pissed off!'. I can't wait.

Read a review of Isolation here

Check out 5 clips here

The second video blog this week, and still nothing to say about the production, yet it's genius. Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost all get drunk (well, I'm sure they've had atleast a pint or two) and just talk rubbish to the camera.

We learn that Edgar wanted to call the pub 'The Tango & Cash' or maybe 'A Cop and a Half' (terrible Burt Reynolds movie), and that he can remember off the top of his head both the 'Dads' from 'My Two Dads'.

Eat a 'Hog Lump' here 

The Japanese trailer for 'The Omen' is certainly a step up from the european and US trailers. What looked like a weak and cruddy remake, might actually turn out ok. I said MIGHT.

The Jap trailer gives a lot more away, mirrors a lot of setups from the original and has a lot of footage that isn't in the other trailers.

check it out here

The news about the next Spike Jonze film has been flying round the net for a while, a live action adaptation of the childrens book 'Where the wild things are'. Over on Aint it cool the other day they broke the news that all the wild things have been cast; Tom Noonan (tall and creepy looking, 'red dragon' from Manhunter), Benicio Del Toro, Michael Berry Jr (Pirates of the Caribbean), Catherine O'Hara (the mum from Home Alone), Forest Whitaker (the Ghost Dog), and Michelle Williams (Blonde chick from Dawsons Creek, and Brokeback). 

The source book is really close to my heart as it was one of my favourites when I was a kid, the story focuses on a boy called Max, who doesn't like his parents so when he sleeps he's transported to the island of the 'wild things' where he is crowned king.

If there was anyone I could see doing the book justice it would be Jonze, and the fact that it's live action makes it twice as interesting to see how its going to turn out. Another tidbit I picked up on the imdb message boards is that the wild things bodies are going to be all animatronic, and their faces added in with CGI, a technique they used for these miller ads.

original article over at aintitcool 

I'm enjoying these 'Fuzz' video blogs more and more each time, they're obviously trying to keep as much under wraps as possible, which is fair, and actually probably for the best. I often ruin films for myself, by reading and watching way too much about the project before i've even set foot in the cinema. Simon Pegg et all seem to be just taking the piss, using the video blogs to try out new comedic material, fooling around with the crew and setting up skits. I'm loving it.

check out number 6 here 

I was excited before, but now i'm officially aroused, the new long 'Superman Returns' trailer has hit the net over on the apple site here. The money they've been piling into this project is really starting to show, and anyone who doesn't get even a little bit excited by this trailer is either an idiot or dead.

Kevin Spacey seems to be really enjoying himself as Lex Luthor, camping it up and playing 'evil genius' almost better than Gene Hackman. The trailer also show's the really great sense of scale that didn't come across in any of the previous clips. Bring on the summer!

New Superman Trailer at apple.com here

Stolen from Aintitcoolnews 

To coin a trite phrase that movie reviewers often use, 'how do I get that 45 minutes of my life back?',  seriously I'd like to know. That's right, 45 minutes is all I managed to watch of this techno babble-bad CGI-ass fest, and I sat through ALL of Batman & Robin.

First some background to this movie: Kurt Wimmer had written and adpated a couple of things for Hollywood, but nothing major. Then he made a (relatively) low budget sci-fi/1984 rip-off, called 'Equilibrium', starring Christian Bale. The movie had a small release, but grew in popularity through the DVD market. Equilibrium was a solid film, it looked beautiful, the plot was interesting, the lead characters were engaging and the world in which it was set was nicely realised. It also had some nice little touches like 'Gun-kata'; a martial art practiced by the lead characters, performed with their guns in hand. So when it came to lay down some beatings there was a wicked mix of martial arts and shooting people in the face. I enjoyed it.

So, what happened? Did Wimmer get lucky with 'Equilibrium'? I sat down last night, having tried to ignore the 'negative buzz' surrounding the film, focused on clearing my mind and being un-biased. Ten minutes in and I was a drooling Jack Nicholson at the end of 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'. Why? Because this movie gave me brain-diabetes.

From what I remember the back story is; it's in the future, the humans try to create super-soldiers using gene-splicing or some crap, the disease gets out, it spreads, the infected people are rounded up and killed, or some are put in camps, then killed, and some escape (I think), the infected are called heebyjeebies (this isn't the name, but they're basically fancy vampires) and now the vampires are fighting back against the humans. So this movie is already off to a crappy start. That back-story is explained to the audience in a 10 second voice over. I had to rewind twice to take it in and even then it doesn't make any sense. Who exactly are the vampires fighting? What is their ultimate goal? To defeat the government I'm guessing… But by now I already don't care.

No sooner does the poster crop up online, as does a teaser trailer. Check it out here It looks like someone grabbed it from french television (UPDATE, new english version here), so it's unfortunatly all in french, but still… i'm excited. The trailer is definitely living up to my expectations, and aslong as they don't suddenly introduce an invisible car, surfboards or a lame ice palace we can expect something pretty spectacular. The whole Raymond Chandler noir angle is working for me too… it's niec to see them coming at Bond from a different angle (even if its only a small bit establishing some tone for the rest of the balls-to-the-wall action and explosions)

you can check out some stills in our flickr gallery here

and for those that missed it that trailer again is here
or if megaupload is too much for you, check it over at youtube

Found over at HNR